2011 – So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

I’ve been mostly feeling the struggles lately, I’ll admit. The holidays are a hard time to stay focused on anything. (By holidays, I’m talking from Halloween-on!) Other ups and downs threatened to derail me from getting real work done in the latter part of 2011, but I kept going, even on days when I wasn’t feeling it. But as I put together this end-of-year-post, I realized I’ve accomplished a few things this year after all. 2011 brought me a lot of fish!

I kicked off the year with a sale to the Broken Time Blues anthology (“Nor the Moonlight”), and followed a short time later with “How the Goddess Came to Spring Flowering Alley” to Crossed Genres. My final sale of the year was a big one — “The Parting Glass” to Lightspeed Magazine. It was a milestone both personally and professionally to make each of the sales, and I’m honored to have appeared with so many great authors.

Speaking of honors, I’ve had an amazing year with my friends and colleagues the Inkpunks. They are amazing folks, and I’m thrilled to be a part of that circle. I’ve also had a lot of fun blogging as The Booze Nerd at Functional Nerds (John and Patrick also had me and some of the rest of the Rigor Amortis crew on a podcast for that book’s relaunch. A real treat!) I honestly enjoy talking about and mixing drinks as much as I do actually drinking them! I hope you’ve been able to try a few.

2011 was also a busy travel year with trips to FOGCon (San Francisco), World Horror Con (Austin), World Con (Reno), and World Fantasy Con (San Diego). Certainly my busiest con year yet! Lots of reading, signing, and partying! While I’m still relatively new to con experience, I’m not sure I can keep up that pace every year. But I spent a lot of time with old friends, made new ones, and had a lot of great conversations about fiction and writing and a lot of other stuff, so it will be hard to keep away in 2012.

I also made a trip back to Seattle for a great Clarion West one-day writing workshop with Mark Teppo on jumpstarting novels. Speaking of….

I decided to refocus my writing a bit and concentrated mostly on the novel this fall. I have a few short stories in progress, but I’ve found it difficult to juggle both forms and frankly, the short stories have not received all the love I’d intended to give them. But I learned to accept my limits and write as much as I can when I can. Can I write more? Can I do better? I think so, but this is not a New Year’s Resolution post. I’ll save that for next week!

I read a lot this year. Despite my better intentions, I didn’t keep a log like I wanted. But some highlights of the year: Dazzle of Day (Molly Gloss), Zoo City (Lauren Beukes), and The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner). Each of these books challenged me in different ways, and I learned something about writing by reading them. I started a “to read” list to try and be more deliberate about the books I choose to read — but that experiment is in the early stages. Not sure how successful it will be just yet.

As I said before, I’ll have a resolutions post up when it’s officially 2012. But for now, I just want to thank all of you who have made 2011 so great. To new friends and old. To family and mentors. Thank you. Some of you in particular have been amazingly supportive as I’ve taken my first baby steps into this whole writing world. I am so grateful.

I hope that 2012 is a great year for all of you.